Why do people catcall or beep at strangers they fancy?

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I suspect that, most often, it makes the recipient of such attention uncomfortable, so why do people do it?

Nowadays it could be perceived as a form of harassment.

I think in times gone by, probably several decades ago, it was a non-verbal way of expressing attraction for someone (a woman) and might have had a social element, i.e, a couple of 'lads' doing it in a group to amuse one another.

Beep, like with the carhorn or just saying 'beep'?

If it's the latter, I should try that. It can't fail worse than anything else I try.

I meant beeping with the car horn. It just happened to me today which was weird because I’m not even attractive anymore. I wouldn’t recommend it unless your goal is to make someone uncomfortable.

What have you tried recently?

Honestly, I've stopped trying.

Maybe you're more attractive than you realize?
Maybe you're more attractive to that person than to the average person?
Maybe both.

Maybe it was a vision impairment…or pity.

Of course, my beau finds me attractive, but I wouldn’t trust his judgment for obvious reasons.

In my experience this one can really make it difficult to express interest. You'll be all stary-eyed and they'll be wondering what kind of scam you're running.

Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s a wonder anyone ends up together, especially when one automatically assumes that the other person doesn’t like them.

Not that that relates to catcalling and being beeped at which I still don’t really understand.

It's odd really because I get catcalled but I also get the opposite. Where I'll just be walking along and one guy will say to the other 'Hey look I found you a girlfriend' and they will reply 'Ew, no, could you imagine?' or 'I could do better' or pretend to throw up. A little dramatic my dude but for the record I'm not interested either.

I've had the whole whistling, beeping, sometimes yelling at me from a car. Never really understood when people yell boo at me when driving by. Happens a lot though.

Plenty of detailed inappropriate sexual comments that wouldn't be appropriate for me to say in this section. You can have those thoughts, random stranger, but I'd rather not hear them.

I don't understand catcalling because a lot of the time there's no way to even respond. Especially if it's by someone in a car speeding past you. So, if not some inappropriately timed form of flirting in the hopes of a reciprocal response, why do it? To show off to other men as a way of bonding? Personal amusement? It puzzles me.

I never respond to it. I try to act like I don’t hear them, not that it happens to me much anymore.

It happened the most when I was a teen to my early twenties. It always made me uncomfortable. Having creeps be creeps isn’t exactly flattering. I’m not sure if they understand that.

Do the young generations still do it? They have OnlyFans for that now and it’s consensual.

I don’t understand it ad I have never tried anything remotely close to that.
I am the total opposite, I avoid showing anything fanciness to strangers.

I don’t think the younger generations do it as much although I could be wrong about that. Usually, guys that do it in my experience are 10+ years older than me. I wonder if the #MeToo movement contributed to changing younger people’s perception of that sort of behavior.

blitzkrieg got it right. It’s a generational thing. In the 50-60-70’s it was considered quite normal to catcall women and show appreciation with whistles etc. Since then the world has become a lot more PC, and equality has hopefully taken a big step forwards.


TP, you said you are not good looking anymore, which says that you , or people around you considered you good looking. While you look at yourself and see the ravages of time etc, other people still see the beautiful person you have always been.

I'm not sure political correctness has anything to do with not harassing people.

Political correctness and harassing people can be related!

For example, use of the 'n' word used to be used to harass people, or slurs towards LGBTQ+ folk, but those things have been tapered down by political correctness. Political correctness and its effect on language and behaviour is measurable.

https://www.facebook.com/story.php?stor ... tid=wWqvZr


Remember, few generations ago, slavery was ok.